Dearest Fellow Primates,
Usually every few months I ask you all to look critically at how WSO has evolved. A few updates and questions on where you think we should invest next.
Latest Changes in 2015
1. We underwent a massive upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 in 2015 which ensures that we are secure and will have supported security and modules by the Drupal community
2. Along with the Drupal upgrade we switched to a new theme and in late 2015, early 2016, we have continued to push our UX and design forward. When we made the initial switch, many of you rightly pointed out that our contrast / fonts were off. I hope you like the current iteration, but again, we're always open to change.
Ongoing Efforts
3. We are currently undergoing a massive site audit...over 10 years of WSO has produced over 200,000 discussions, most of them generated by you, the members of WSO. While some of are exceptionally high quality, many of them are what Google would qualify as "thin content"...with a larger emphasis on overall quality over quantity, many larger forums took a MAJOR hit to organic search traffic in 2012.
While we were lucky enough to avoid any decline, growth since late 2012 has definitely slowed. We've fared much better than most large forums, but after a lot of research it seems clear that one of the things holding us back has been our thin content all along. As such, we are taking extensive measures this year to test and iterate to make sure that we keep the Google bots happy with WSO. Even if this means de-indexing or even deleting the crappiest / thinnest posts, I think in the long run it will really help our growth.
What Do You Want?
4. covering those 3 major things above, I wanted to open it up to the community to ask how we can make WSO better? When you come onto the site, what do you wish you could see more of? less of?
Thanks!
Patrick
WallStreetOasis.com It would be AWESOME if some of the most notable members on WSO would do webinars or google hangouts under their alias name for anonymity reasons.
some do presentations, but then they still want to keep their webinar-alias separate from their wso alias
Site Stability Work - There are still instances where the quote function doesn't work, the @ tagging doesn't work, etc. It's occurring less and less often, so great job, but it still rears its head from time to time.
Moderation/Monkey Shit - The limit on the amount of monkey shit I can throw in a 24 hour period is still frustrating. I know it's meant to encourage people to upvote instead of downvote, but there are just some users and some comments than need buried from time to time. An alternative would be named moderators that could clean up the bullshit without bananas or shit being involved. I feel like more high-level professionals would waste their time here (and give AMAs) if they didn't encounter highschoolers with social disabilities on a regular basis.
Content - Something I have been wondering about as far as content goes is the creation of a few web pages or a wiki to compliment the forum. http://www.top-law-schools.com for instance has some pages on admissions, schools, students, etc. I don't think they even do it particularly well, but I do know that it's a great resource people in the forums can point to and a great way to drive traffic to the forums as well. I know there are sites out there that serve this purpose on some level, such as Poets and Quants and Mergers and Inquisitions, so I understand if you don't want to go that route, but with all of the fantastic info already here, it might be easier to read in "article" forum instead of "forum post" form.
Good advice. I agree with the monkey shit thing to be honest. Maybe they can just cap it so that someone can only throw x amount of MS to ONE person ever. That way nobody gets targeted.
Thanks...I think the CRE mention issue is more around how slow that the pop up window opens... as for quotes, we'd love examples of that breaking down and.or when it breaks on you so we can investigate.
I hear you, but I think if someone really is posting crap - spam, or hateful, the best way to get rid of those users (especially if they are new) is to click the "report violation" red link. Otherwise, we really increase the amount of work for our moderating team. Maybe what we can do is for Certified Users, we can remove this limit...or place it so that one user can't target one other user more than ~5-10 MS...the point of MS isn't for you to find an annoying user and then throw MS at all of their previous comments...too frequently that is what happens (and was never the intention behind it :-)
Interesting idea... we have something like that under our FAQs : http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/frequently-asked-questions as well as our finance dictionary: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/node/122593 in order to try and address the repetitive questions in the forums.
I think what may help this section is if we make a bigger effort to create massive evergreen content around a lot of repetitive annoying topics that are tough such as:
"Review my resume" - give very detailed tips on how to craft the "perfect" finance resume (an extension of us giving away our resume templates a few years ago)
"What are my chances?" - instead of just saying "it depends", give actual subjective % chances based on tiers of candidates...for undergrad to IB front office, for example. It would be a massive article, but then it could be linked to / used every single time someone asks that question :-) then we could do a similar one to break into private equity.
etc etc...thoughts?
Thanks! Patrick
I'm not sure how receptive people would be to this either, but a super secret verified user lounge could be cool too - some sort of middle ground between WSO anonymity and straight up connecting on LinkedIn. Might be more useful for networking and talking specifics about companies where people could give and receive details that they might not want public. Plus it would further encourage verification.
I know for the real estate subforum at least, there would certainly be networking advantages.
Alternatively, since you and Andy know all of the verified users anyhow via verifying them, you could set up a private LinkedIn group and invite verified users to it. There would probably be less discussion between verified users that way, but more networking potential.
I whole-heartedly agree with CRE on this one. A private LinkedIn group that went to verified users that only you and Andy could approve would atleast give a face to the name. I know that I personally have connected with about 5-6 WSO'ers outside of the forum either through email/LinkedIn, and it is especially helpful for the Real Estate Forum. If certain individuals wished to stay anonymous then they totally could as well.
Something that exists in a BMW forum I frequent (e90post.com) is regional forums which really allow local enthusiasts to connect (http://www.e90post.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=19). I feel this would be helpful in organizing get togethers or WSO happy hours which would benefit all.
WallStreetOasis.com
Thank you for your previous reply, but I'm wondering your thoughts on this.
Just wanted to thank you guys for this forum. As a high schooler I've learned 10x more from this forum than I could've imagined and am proud to say that I've become a daily reader.
I think the site is great - has been very helpful.
I think the main challenge to overcome from a content point of view is how to keep things fresh when the core (IBD in the US) doesn't change. Some interesting ideas to spice things up might be a concentrated effort on more geo-targetted content (i.e. APAC/European writers talking about their industries). Another would be specifically targetting people from under-the-radar groups in banks to create content (i.e. GS SSG is a WSO fav, but what about other Bank's SSG's/ principal investing arms / or alternativley the DMA/other tech desks).
WSO to me provides access to information that you wouldn't be able to otherwise have - that's the core value prop for me - not just the jobs/companies database, but content from the mouths of employees. The form of that content (blogs/webcasts etc) aren't as important to me as the type of information, with the more specific the beter.
very good point. We've been trying to get much more specific on our webinar presentations...regional focus, actual cases, etc...I think while this serves less people, the people it does serve are much happier.
I noticed that you guys have cut down the links to many of the forums. Is that basically to phase out the less busy forums? My go-tos are ER and AM and now they are a bit more cumbersome to get to (albeit, one extra click). Just curious what the goal of this is? Feels like this will lead to even less content in these areas
no, the goal was never to hurt those forums...I've updated the menu to include all the industry forums right now to make navigation easier.
Gotcha. I think that makes life easier. I was worried that dropping those industry links may lead to less activity/incorrectly placed posts. Think that works.
Other than that minor point, think all the updates/improvements are going well and have made the user experience better. Appreciate all the work that goes into it from you and the team
WallStreetOasis.com AndyLouis Any plans on pushing the Job Board more?
Spitballing here, but is there any way (and any interest) in removing anonymity for banana-giving. I understand why shit giving is anonymous, but is there any harm is having someone know that you think their post is fantastic without having to post "+1" or "SB" after the post itself?
Reddit I think gives you the option of giving anonymous "gold" or telling the person you give it to that you are, in fact, the person giving it.
interesting idea on the SBs, but I feel like there is a risk of a few high profile users that would may start rewarding each other... ;-)
What we're developing right now is actually a distinct "notification" icon and folder vs what we have for the PMs (with the goal being that SB/MS notifications and other system notifications won't clutter up your inbox anymore and will allow you to jump straight to the thread/comment in question, for replies, mentions, SBs, MS, etc). PMs will be just for actual messages from other members...
about the Certified User lounge...we actually had this before in the form of a chat room...i think we got rid of it because it was rarely used since most Certified Users didn't know it existed.
plus, the advice dispensed there was private = takes away from everyone else being able to benefit...kind of the point of WSO. I do, however, want to make WSO a more useful place for Certified Users, so maybe we should revisit this and try it a different way...welcome your thoughts!
I wish there was some way to get Certified User while still being in undergrad. Jr Certified User? lol
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